Things took a rather bleak turn during SNY’s broadcast of the Mets-Diamondbacks game on Thursday night.
Rather than engaging Gary Cohen in a conversation about the meaning of the universe, Keith Herndnadez started to discuss his own mortality. This was, of course, during the sixth inning of a game that the Mets were leading 9-0. So, it wasn’t as if this was another painful affair for an SNY booth that has likely been tortured by an underperforming Mets team, albeit they have won their last five straight.
Cohen was merely fascinated that the SNY crew in the truck were able to pull out a statistic from the 1950s, which was the last time a player in Major League Baseball recorded a cycle with two triples. This led Cohen, the Mets’ play-by-play voice, to maintain that there’s an answer to every question, including the meaning of the universe.
Apparently, that was a bit too mundane for Hernandez. But talking about his own death? Not so much.
Rather than traveling to San Diego for the Mets’ final series of the first half, Hernandez will be returning home to New York. He told Cohen that he would not be staying up to watch West Coast games, and will instead set his DVR for the 10 p.m. ET game on Saturday night.
Keith Hernandez had some mortality musings on Thursday night's Mets-Diamondbacks broadcast on SNY. "You know, as I've gotten older, I like to get up early and enjoy the full day. I haven't got too many days left." pic.twitter.com/Nm5jwoxiz0
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) July 7, 2023
“As I’ve gotten older, I like to get up early and enjoy the full day,” Hernandez said during the sixth inning of Thursday’s game. “I haven’t got too many days left.”
“Now, I tried to go meaning of life with you and you start dropping mortality on me after you declined to engage with me?” a befuddled Cohen asked Hernandez. “Now you’re talking about how your days are growing short?”
Hernandez will be turning 70 years old in October, which he called a “little daunting.”
“You know with modern medicine and technology, you should live to be at least 100,” Cohen said.
“Ah, I don’t know,” Hernandez replied. “I think I have too many hurts. If I’m OK physically and mentally, hey, take it as long as you go. I’ll take 15 years—85—I’ll take that.”
Cohen said that they’ll need Hernandez around for a bit longer before the latter went on to say for some reason that when he was 15 years old, he was a sophomore in high school.
Anybody who frequently watches the Mets shouldn’t be surprised by Hernandez saying whatever comes to mind. It just goes to show, you never know what’s going to be said during an SNY broadcast, whether Hernandez is chiding the world’s porous borders, making things awkward with his “always be erect” comments or talking about his own mortality.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.